I’m supposed to be packing for our upcoming move … but instead I’ve been reading Wolf Hall. When I was in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (a lovely place to go if you are a writer, artist or composer), writer Pam Durban recommended it to me. It’s taken me years to finally read it, but I’m so glad I did.

What a terrific book! It tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from obscurity (he was a blacksmith’s son — his enemies at court never let him forget it) to be Henry VIII’s chief minister during the king’s turbulent divorce from Catherine of Aragon, his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, the execution of Thomas More and various misadventures after that. (more…)

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A bit about me …

I'm Randon Billings Noble, an essayist and book reviewer, who is also the mother of now three-and-a-half year old twins. I don't post here as much as I used to, but you can read my published writing and hear my writing news by clicking the link immediately below (which will take you to my writing website, randonbillingsnoble.com). Thanks!

I’m thrilled to announce that my lyric essay chapbook Devotional is out from Red Bird Chapbooks! This brilliantly decorated star fold book opens to expose a simple beauty and the experience of longing in a series of personal devotions, its brevity and contemplative prose evocative of a medieval Book of Hours. Each section of Devotional calls […]

I’m pleased to announce that my author talk, “The Sparkling Future, the Eternal Present,” is up at Superstition Review’s blog. In it I read an excerpt from my essay “The Sparkling Future” and discuss the power of seduction, the price of betrayal, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, break-ups, beheadings, and what it’s like — as an essayist […]

It begins with a quote from the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet — “There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.” — and continues in 69 short numbered sections. You can find it here: “69 […]

I’m pleased to announce that I have two “Required Reading” columns in Creative Nonfiction: “A Story We Tell Ourselves and Others,” a review essay, Required Reading, Creative Nonfiction (May 2016) Here’s an excerpt: It’s often said that no one really knows what goes on inside a marriage except for the people who are in it—and I would […]